Due to the configuration of international telephone networks, a telephone carrier in a first originating country desiring to route a call to a second terminating country, will often have to route the call by means of one or more transit carriers in intermediate countries. The routing of international transit calls is often a desirable source of revenue for the transit carrier.
Presently, if the terminating country is served by a plurality of telephone carriers, it is the transit carrier who determines which carrier in the terminating country should handle the call. Typically, the transit carrier will allocate received international transit calls among a plurality of carriers in the terminating country in the same manner as calls that are generated within the transit country that are destined for the terminating country, i.e., by utilizing the well known Carrier Proportioned Routing (CPR) method.
Carrier Proportioned Routing allocates a "fair" amount of telephone traffic to each carrier in a foreign terminating country based on proportions that are consistent with the amount of telephone traffic that the transit carrier receives from the various carriers in the respective terminating country.
While Carrier Proportioned Routing provides an effective basis for a transit carrier to allocate international transit traffic among a plurality of terminating carriers, it does not allow the originating carrier to designate how international transit calls should be routed.
Increasingly, international telephone carriers are entering contractual arrangements that specify how calls that are destined for various terminating countries should be allocated among the plurality of carriers that may serve the respective country. These contractual arrangements are typically based on the relative percentage of telephone traffic that the originating carrier receives from the various carriers in the respective terminating country.
As is apparent from the above deficiencies with the prior art, a need exists for a routing system that is capable of honoring and enforcing the contractual arrangements entered by an originating carrier specifying how international transit calls should be allocated among a plurality of carriers in a particular terminating country.